Monday, December 7, 2015

Not Entirely Without Warning: The Latest Prediction

I really didn't think that we would see too many swings in the data after 8 feeders, one of them being Chicago with 37,000 finishers. Then again, the size of the Marine Corps Marathon is nothing to sneeze at 23,000 so I suppose we can expect that unless the race analysis shows it's following the same trends, roughly, as previous races, we're going to see considerable movement of the cutoff calculation.

The MCM analysis showed that 2015 finishers were way up over 2014, which translated to more qualifiers than last year. And as we know (or if you don't know, I suppose), the 2016 cutoff was the biggest ever at 2:28. It follows that I expected the cutoff prediction to go up.

Qualifier age group data:

AG

2014 Qualifiers

2014 AG Total

% Qualifiers

2015 Qualifiers

2015 AG Total

% Qualifiers

F18-34

1589

19645

8.09%

1469

18391

7.99%

F35-39

699

7113

9.83%

682

7216

9.45%

F40-44

639

6421

9.95%

623

6314

9.87%

F45-49

620

4242

14.62%

571

4521

12.63%

F50-54

325

2693

12.07%

374

2900

12.90%

F55-59

184

1376

13.37%

158

1358

11.63%

F60-64

86

542

15.87%

80

592

13.51%

F65-69

28

185

15.14%

33

206

16.02%

F70-74

6

51

11.76%

3

56

5.36%

F75-79

0

13

0.00%

1

9

11.11%

F80+

0

0

0.00%

0

1

0.00%

M18-34

1384

17642

7.84%

1202

16217

7.41%

M35-39

642

8332

7.71%

641

8069

7.94%

M40-44

716

8344

8.58%

660

8136

8.11%

M45-49

824

6622

12.44%

767

6732

11.39%

M50-54

661

5018

13.17%

582

5094

11.43%

M55-59

414

3164

13.08%

394

3170

12.43%

M60-64

253

1589

15.92%

244

1624

15.02%

M65-69

114

658

17.33%

100

697

14.35%

M70-74

35

224

15.63%

29

237

12.24%

M75-79

5

59

8.47%

8

55

14.55%

M80+

0

9

0.00%

2

17

11.76%

Totals

9224

93942

9.82%

8623

91612

9.41%

Number of qualifiers is still down 6.52% over 2014. Definitely means that the current cutoff prediction is lower than 2:28. For that, we can all breath a (temporary) sigh of relief.

The margin data:

Margin

2014

Percentage

2015

Percentage

<1 minute

581

6.30%

493

5.72%

1-2 minutes

572

6.20%

524

6.08%

2-3 minutes

524

5.68%

455

5.28%

3-4 minutes

466

5.05%

459

5.32%

4-5 minutes

445

4.82%

363

4.21%

5-10 minutes

1928

20.90%

1805

20.93%

10-20 minutes

2431

26.36%

2326

26.97%

20> minutes

2277

24.69%

2198

25.49%

Totals

9224

8623

Squeaker Pack in 2015: 26.60%
Squeaker Pack in 2014: 28.06%

This data didn't change much since the last prediction data compilation and analysis. Still seeing more qualifiers in 2015/2016 with more than 5 minutes of margin.

Finally the cutoff calculation.

The number of qualifiers achieving 147 seconds or better for the 2016 Boston Marathon was 7824.

Sorting the 2017 Boston Marathon Qualifiers by margin in seconds descending, the 7824th runner has a margin of...

95 seconds or 1:35

I have to say, that took me a bit by surprise. Almost 20 seconds up. Now, the next race on deck for me to compile is NYCM and I've heard varying accounts of folks saying it was hot, etc. Possibly, 2014 results were better than 2015. It's also a big race (the biggest, in fact, as far as I'm aware). It could sway things back down or up depending on what the data looks like year over year.

Either way, we're still not looking at 2:28, though 95 seconds is certainly higher than I was thinking we would be at this point.